


It’s humid in the Midwest from June to July

by inasong



Category: Glee
Genre: College, F/M, First Love, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, I'm a sucker for college!fuinn, and I love their high school couple dynamic, and falling in love because you have both changed, it's all about the concept of meeting someone from your past again, just wanted to see what they could have been, past Finchel, puck (mentioned) - Freeform, rachel berry (mentioned) - Freeform, so kind of an au where finn is alive, takes place during the summer of s4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:08:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24147928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inasong/pseuds/inasong
Summary: She emerges from the bathroom just a couple of minutes later wearing a flowery dress with a pair of sunglasses settled on top of her blonde head, and Finn has to stop himself from kissing her then and there, in between her notes and pencils, as if they were fifteen all over again.or: finn and quinn re-meet at the right time.
Relationships: Quinn Fabray/Finn Hudson
Comments: 5
Kudos: 29





	It’s humid in the Midwest from June to July

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in a couple of days, and I'm sure if I don't post it right now I'll never do it so here it is! what I wanted to do with this was basically exploring finn and quinn's relationship after high school as two different people attending college and living different lives. also partially based on the song metamodernity by vansire (the title is a line from it) because it gave me such specific vibes about ohio life and I loved it. enjoy!!

He has just left his Philosophy 2 class when his phone starts buzzing in his jeans pocket. Both his hands are busy: one holding a cup of steaming coffee and the other the first draft of his final paper on Socrates, so Finn carefully slips the latter under his arm and takes his phone out, praying he won’t spill coffee all over the hall floor.

When he reads the name on the screen, his lips quickly grow into a smile.

“Hey,” he says walking out of the building and toward the huge green lawn of Lima’s community college. It’s almost May, and people are finally starting to enjoy the sunny weather: many students are laying in the grass either studying or chatting, as finals get closer and closer with each passing day.

The voice on the other line replies with the same sweet familiar tone Finn has heard a thousand times before, _“Hi. Is this a good time?”_

He smiles at the question sitting down on an empty bench and settles his coffee next to him, careful not to knock it down, “Any time is a good time when Quinn Fabray calls you,”

It’s strange: out of everyone in high school – except Puck, who has somehow ended up being his roommate – Quinn has been the one he’s most kept in touch with. They call on the phone and text every now and then: sometimes she’ll send him a song that makes her think of him and he’ll send a picture of what he’s cooked for dinner back - which is almost always just mac and cheese, but it’s nice to have someone to talk to.

College is pretty lonely, more than he’d like to admit anyway.

 _“Well, I am pretty awesome,”_ she says, and Finn can practically picture the smirk pulling on her pink lips, _“But listen, is this really a good time? Because I need to tell you something,”_ The I-need-to-tell-you-something part makes him wince a little. The last time Quinn told him that she needed to tell him something, she said she was pregnant with his baby, which actually turned out to be his best friend’s baby. 11/10 an experience Finn would _not_ recommend to anyone.

He sits up straight and bites the inside of his cheek like he does whenever he’s nervous, “Uh, no – yeah. Go ahead, I’m listening. Wait,” he realizes thinking back to their phone call on Sunday that it might have something to do with the creep that’s been stalking her for the past week, “Is this about that guy from your Greek Lit class bothering you? Do you need me to come up there and teach him a lesson? ‘Cause I –”

Quinn interrupts him laughing, _“No, no, it’s not about that at all, though I appreciate your chivalry,”_ Finn refrains from asking what chivalry means and just makes a mental note to google it later, “ _I just wanted you to know that I plan on coming down to Lima for a little to study for my finals.”_ He really wasn’t expecting that: usually people in schools like Yale shut themselves into the huge libraries on campus and study until their eyes burn or their brains explode.

(Well, at least that’s what Puck told him – he’s not really sure)

 _“Everyone around here is super stressed out,”_ she adds anticipating Finn’s question, _“I need some quiet, boring, ordinary Ohio to really just focus.”_

It’s not such a bad idea now that he thinks about it: the most exciting thing to happen in Lima the past month ( _month_ , not even week!) has been a drunk guy stealing a street sign and waving it around while running and screaming _fuck the police_ for like half an hour. He tells her she’ll find nothing but peace in their old tiny hometown. His natural follow up question comes just after she’s done laughing, “So, when are you coming down?”

He hears the sound of people shuffling and moving as he loses Quinn for a solid ten seconds before she’s back apologizing, _“Sorry, I’m getting off the E train at Penn Station and there’s so many people, hold on,”_ Finn raises an eyebrow and waits until she finally comes back sighing, _“I’m on my way back to New Haven right now and my flight is at five, so I was hoping to see you for dinner maybe?”_

“I’ll ring Breadstix and get us a table,” he says taking a sip of coffee, “That is of course unless you want to try some delicious homemade mac and cheese instead.”

He can almost picture her scrunched up face, _“It sounds inviting, but maybe another time. I’ll text you when I’m at the airport, okay?”_

“Okay.”

_“See you soon, love you, bye,”_

“Bye.”

Love you. Finn stares blankly at his phone for a minute. Love you? Since when does Quinn end their calls with _love you_? Has he missed something or is he reading too much into it? After all she left out the _I_ , which, from what he has gathered, is kind of the important part. The coffee still burns in his hand as he stands up and starts walking back to his dorm. Love you. He hears a couple of kids laying on the field humming along to a radio playing _Keep Holding On_ and a small smile appears on his lips. Love you.

They go out the night she comes back and the one after that. Then Carole invites her over for their Friday dinner tradition and treats her to a splendid meal Finn wouldn’t have dreamed to ever pull off. She chats with Burt about politics, and with Sam – who’s still living with them until the end of the school year – about Glee Club, asking him what songs they’re planning to do for Nationals. She insists on helping his mom with the dishes and smiles the whole way through, listening to stories about Finn and how he played baseball when he was seven.

He sits at the table, unable to tear his eyes off of her. She looks effortless, making everyone fall in love with each word that falls out of her pretty mouth.

Sam punches him on the shoulder and he comes back to reality, suddenly turning an alarming shade of red.

“Dude,” he whispers laughing, “You’re drooling.” Finn hits him back softly in the stomach and shakes his head, “Shut up.” Quinn catches his gaze just as he’s saying it and smiles.

There’s a sort of unspoken conversation in those few seconds their eyes meet, and Finn doesn’t get much sleep that night. Or the one after that, or any night really, because Quinn Fabray is back into his life and he can’t seem to be able to think about anything else but her. When he brings it up with Puck while they’re playing Mario Kart, he simply shrugs throwing another blue shell, “She was your first. Maybe you simply never really fell out of love.”

Quinn studies like a _maniac_. The few times Finn has been allowed into the Fabray mansion he has either found her surrounded by notes and post its of every color known to man, or furiously typing away at her laptop at an alarming speed. Sometimes he’ll just silently make her a cup of tea or fix her something to eat and slip it beside her. She usually mumbles a ‘thank you’ before opening another huge book and diving right into it.

It’s almost been three days since Finn has seen her or heard from her at all. Her phone is disconnected – to avoid any distraction obviously – so he dials her home number, praying Judy will answer. Thankfully she does, and she also tells him Quinn has barely gone out of her room the past few days. After hanging up, Finn takes his car keys and sets out on a mission.

“I really need to finish this chapter, Finn,”

“No,” he replies leaning on the doorframe of her bedroom, “What you need is a little sun and fresh air. And maybe a churro, but we’ll see about that later.”

Quinn sighs looking at the time and then back at the highlighter in her hand. “Just this last paragraph,” she begs settling her glasses back on her nose. Finn knows her too well: one paragraph means one chapter, which usually means a whole book, which means - before she even knows it - it’s going to be pitch black outside.

“We’re going now, get up,”

_“Finn!”_

“I’m going to count to three. One,”

“Really? I’m not a baby,”

“Two...”

“Alright, alright. Jesus,” She closes the book with a thud and rubs her eyes, “Just give me five minutes to change from my pajamas.”

He smirks satisfied by his tiny victory and chooses not to comment on the fact that she’s still in her pajamas and probably has been for days now. She emerges from the bathroom just a couple of minutes later wearing a flowery dress with a pair of sunglasses settled on top of her blonde head, and Finn has to stop himself from kissing her then and there, in between her notes and pencils, as if they were fifteen all over again.

They drive for hours, talking and talking about everything they never said back in high school. She puts her feet up on the dashboard and tells him about Beth, about the pain of letting her go, of letting _him_ go. “Sometimes I wonder, if she had been yours, maybe I would have kept her, maybe –”

Finn doesn’t tell her he still dreams about Drizzle, about their daughter – or who she could have been. He pictures a little girl with brown hair and green eyes running around his mom’s backyard, sleeping safely in his arms, and smiling at him from the other side of the table. He doesn’t tell Quinn that in every dream, she’s laughing with them too, chasing her around the backyard, looking at her as she sleeps in his arms, sitting right next to him at that damn table.

When words fail and silence falls over them, there’s always music to fill it. They’re speeding down the highway, clouds in the rearview, and The Smiths blasting through Finn’s car stereo.

_Driving in your car_

_Oh, please don't drop me home_

_Because it's not my home, it's their_

_Home, and I'm welcome no more_

Quinn hums along, fingers tapping on her thigh. It’s her favorite song: she had told him so the first time they had talked during lunch freshman year. Still, to this day, she sings the words all wrong and it makes him go crazy. Finn doesn’t know if at this point she’s just doing it on purpose or if she really thinks that the song goes like that. I mean – thick English accents aside – it’s pretty clear that they’re not singing _and if a ten times truck kills the both of us._ What does that even mean?

“You’re singing it wrong,” he points out laughing with the window rolled all the way down and the wind playing with his short hair.

She cocks her head to the side and raises an eyebrow, “Is that illegal or something?” Finn refrains from telling her that it’s actually adorable and simply shakes his head, looking at the cars running next to them. Quinn keeps singing, her gentle vibrato filling his chest with something he’s not sure he’s ready to confront just yet.

Her hand finds his as soon he rests it on the gearshift. It’s a simple touch, yet Finn’s breath immediately catches in his throat. She doesn’t seem to notice and keeps looking out to the green forests passing quickly beside them. He thinks about the girl he fell in love with – with her cheerleader’s uniforms and wide eyes, and he thinks about the girl who broke his heart – with her glacial smiles and venomous words. The Quinn sitting next to him, in her flowery dress and yellow sunglasses, doesn’t remind him of either.

“Do you think we’ve changed?”

It’s almost as if she’s been reading his mind the past few minutes. Finn struggles to find a clever answer and just ends up badly quoting his Philosophy professor, “I think everything has to change sooner or later, it’s just how the universe works. But maybe it’s for the best, right?”

She gives him the sweetest smile he has seen in a while and his heart flips, “Right.”

When he walks out of his last exam, Finn lets out a long sigh and slides down the cold wall of the hallway to sit on the floor. His head hurts and he just wants to sleep for a hundred years. Most students are walking around like zombies, knocking into walls and frantically going over notes. Finals week is done and he feels like a huge weigh has been lifted off his chest all of a sudden.

He rubs his eyes holding back a yawn, and pulls out his phone. He’s read the text she’s sent him just a couple of hours ago so many times he doesn’t even bother counting anymore.

_8:46 am_

_from Quinn_

_you are going to kill that history final! miss you_

Her exams are almost done too: if he recalls correctly, she has to sit through her last one - Shakespearean Theater or something along those lines - this afternoon.

Finn sometimes thinks about his aspiration of becoming an actor. It’s childish and stupid to dream about it now, but more often than not he wonders what would have happened if he had just studied a little more. Maybe he would be at Yale now, studying Greek Tragedies and performing in school plays with Quinn. Maybe they’d be walking around campus together, holding hands and trading notes. Maybe he’d be kissing her through the streets of New Haven and buying her coffee every morning before her classes start. Maybe she would be loving him like she did four years ago.

She comes back for the summer – just for a few weeks, to visit her mom and enjoy the eternal humidity which overcomes the Midwest from June to July. Ohio is terribly warm and sticky, and life in Lima gets even more suffocating than before. Luckily, Quinn offers a rather efficient distraction from the fact that the New Directions have just lost nationals, and Finn ends up spending most of his days with her, wandering around town and driving down endless roads passing next to farm, after farm, after farm.

It’s a quiet evening, there are barely any cars around. Everyone who could get out for the summer is gone, leaving the wonderful pink sky (courtesy of the omnipresent wildfires and gorgeous sunset) to just the two of them. Finn walks slow, conscious of the fact that for every step he takes, Quinn takes two if not three.

She’s singing a song Finn doesn’t know, making her feet skip to the beat and her dress dance in the breeze, _“I could wander Paris after dark, take a carriage ride through Central Park,”_ she turns to him grinning and finishes the line in her delicate angel-like voice, _“But it wouldn’t be as nice as a summer in Ohio…”_

His hands are shoved deep into his pockets, desperately trying to do anything except wrapping around Quinn. He’s almost kissed her twice now: the first time at the station when he had gone to pick her up, and the second time in Burt’s shop, when she had wiped grease from his nose and bit her lower lip at him. Puck keeps telling him to just do it. Maybe he’s got a point.

“What are you singing?” he asks kicking a rock next to the sidewalk.

She catches up to him with a long step and their shoulders bump together, “I thought Rachel made you watch every musical ever produced when you two dated,”

Again with the Rachel talk. Lately there’s been an awful lot of that: ever since she got Fanny, Quinn has been subtly slipping her into every conversation they have to see his reaction. It’s so frustrating - Finn wishes he could turn around and tell her that Rachel hasn’t been in any of his dreams recently, while she has been living in his head rent free for quite a long time now.

When he doesn’t reply and simply shrugs at her statement, she sighs, “It’s called _A Summer in Ohio_ , it’s from the musical _The Last Five Years_.” It sounds vaguely familiar - maybe Rachel did make him watch it - but he just nods and goes back to kicking his rock. Quinn makes him nervous, way more than any girl has ever managed to. It’s probably because she’s super smart, and looks beautiful ninety-nine percent of the time, and the fact that she could probably kill him with one look is pretty terrifying.

They’ve been walking for a little over an hour, and suddenly Finn notices that the exact spot they’re standing in right at that moment is the one where they had their first kiss. He remembers because he was walking Quinn home after seeing a movie, and the only thing going through is head for the whole walk back had just been an endless stream of _just kiss her now, do it!_ until he had stopped in the middle of the road and finally did it.

“Look where we ended up,” he says slowing down and looking at the tree on their right.

She looks confused for a second before recognizing the roundabout on the other side of the street. A half smile grows on her face, “You still remember?”

The leaves on the old oak tree next to them sway in the evening air and his mind brings him back to a night like that, in the middle of May.

“How could I forget?” he says smiling shyly, “It was my first kiss,”

He recalls the awkward way his clumsy hands had found her slim waist, unsure in their intentions. Quinn had leaned in first, meeting his lips and wrapping both her hands around his sweaty fifteen-year-old neck. Finn had never felt cooler, kissing a girl in the middle of the street with his heart thumping loudly in his ears.

Quinn brings him back to the present by simply brushing his arm, “Mine too. Kind of hard to forget the way you high-fived yourself right after.”

“Oh God, I forgot about that!”

“It was very cute,”

As their laughing fades out into the breeze, they’re left alone with nothing but memories and a deep sense of regret. There’s a beat, and then the atmosphere shifts, from friends joking about the past to something closer to ex-lovers longing to _get back_ to that past. Finn is not sure who takes the first step, maybe it’s him or maybe it’s Quinn: it doesn’t matter. They’re standing close, too close, and he wants to kiss her, he really does but –

“Are you going to kiss me or do I have to lean in first again?”

The smirk growing on her lips gives him the confidence to close the distance between them and finally letting his hands find her waist, this time wrapping them around it with the notion of being nineteen and in love with the woman sinking into his arms. They kiss, and Finn’s head spins around until he’s not sure his feet are on the ground anymore. Quinn tastes of summer, and books, and chocolate ice cream, and all the things that remind him of everything that’s good in the world. She presses her nose to him and smiles, making their fingers intertwine.

The sky is still pink, and the old oak tree is still there, but the two figures walking on the sidewalk hand in hand are not gawky fifteen-year-olds dreaming about football and cheerleading anymore. They’re people with scars, and broken dreams, and endless hopes for the future. They’re different. Finn thinks about the 93 he got on his Philosophy paper and smiles: guess his professor was right after all, change _is_ inevitable.

But maybe it really is for the best.

**Author's Note:**

> quinn secretly loves musical because she's a nerd and finn is just a really tall confused human. I tried to keep a plausible timeline as much as I could even though with glee it's almost impossible. let me know if you liked it or if you just understood the vibes. that's all I really want honestly ahhaha.


End file.
